Free Republic

Sam Bankman-Fried flown to the US... There will be an emergency court hearing in Mohave County, Arizona tomorrow morning. Republican Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh is being challenged by Maricopa County on his request to inspect ballots... Also in Arizona the two-day trial for Republican Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's election challenge... The FBI taking shots at the Twitter Files revelations... The commander of the US Navy's Seal Team 1 found dead in his San Diego home... In Israel Benjamin Netanyahu says he has formed a new government... In France railroad controllers going on strike Friday... Thanks to gasoline prices an...

In 1850, 60-year-old Robert Newsom, a prosperous farmer, traveled forty miles from his home in Callaway County, Missouri to neighboring Audrain County to buy a slave. Newsom was the head of a large and complex household that included several of his grown children, grandchildren, and five enslaved boys and men. His wife had died a few years earlier, a consideration that may have influenced his decision to purchase a female slave, a fourteen-year-old girl named Celia. From the first day, Newsom treated Celia as his concubine. Testimony given before the Missouri Supreme Court in 1855 indicates that Newsom raped Celia...

The value of welfare and government-provided health insurance for some U.S. households in certain blue states exceeds six figures, exacerbating the labor shortage that has plagued the U.S. economy in the wake of the Covid pandemic, according to a newly released study entitled “Paying Americans Not to Work.” In 24 states, unemployment benefits and Obamacare subsidies for a family of four with two unemployed parents is equivalent to — and in some cases, exceeds — the national median household income, according to a recent study conducted by the economists Casey Mulligan, Erwin Antoni, and Stephen Moore on behalf of the...

Legal expert Alan Dershowitz says DOJ use of subpoenas to target House Intelligence Committee staff phone and email records is likely unconstitutional. The former House Intelligence Committee chairman is suggesting the Justice Department illegally spied on him and possibly sought blackmail material after a bombshell revelation that federal prosecutors used grand jury subpoenas five years ago to get the phone and email records of his top investigators during the congressional probe that unraveled the now-disproven Russia collusion narrative. "This is, I believe, unprecedented spying in modern political history at this point, and just sad that it's taken us almost six...

One of New Jersey’s largest public school districts is requiring masks starting Wednesday due to rising COVID-19 cases. Passaic Public Schools has 17 schools, including Passaic High School, and enrolls approximately 14,000 students. Superintendent Sandra M. Diodonet told parents on Tuesday that, under a school board policy, masks are required “during periods of a High Activity Level” of COVID-19 as documented by the state health department. “Therefore, effective Wednesday, December 21, 2022, all employees, Pre-K through grade 12 students, and visitors are required to wear face coverings in all district facilities, school grounds, and buses,” Diodonet wrote in a letter...

On the same day that that the Bahamas extradited FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to the U.S. to face criminal charges, two former executives at FTX and Alameda Research pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal fraud charges. Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive of Alameda Research, and FTX co-founder Zixiao (Gary) Wang, also its former chief technology officer, were charged for their roles in contributing to the crypto platform’s collapse. [Snip]

One week ago, Maricopa County officials squirmed when Kari Lake’s team requested to inspect the Maricopa County ballots from Election Day. This was obvious at the time and Kari Lake’s team later tweeted out the video clip. NOW WE KNOW WHY– The Maricopa County team was afraid they would get caught intentionally using the wrong-sized ballots to sabotage Election Day. On Wednesday at the Kari Lake trial in Maricopa County, the Maricopa County Tabulation and Election Center (MCTEC) run by Kari Lake-hating operative Stephen Richer kept a GOP heat map on its wall before the 2022 election. The dark red...

There is no right to physician-assisted suicide in the Massachusetts Constitution, according to the state’s Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), which ruled in a case today that spanned the last six years. Cape Cod doctor Roger Kligler, who suffers from advanced prostate cancer, and Dr. Alan Steinbach, who treats terminally ill patients, appealed a superior court decision that denied their claims that medically assisted suicide (also known as physician-assisted suicide) was outside the criminal laws for murder and manslaughter, and thus, insolated physicians and patients from risks of prosecution. The two doctors argued that the right to assisted suicide was guaranteed...

Some Republican lawmakers remained skeptical of supporting the war in Ukraine despite an in-person joint congressional address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky’s trip took place as Congress deliberates an omnibus spending bill that would appropriate $45 billion more for Ukraine assistance, on top of $66 billion appropriated this year.

The Laudato Si’ Movement, together with Italian Catholic Action and other Catholic national realities, launch an appeal for “an economy of peace” as a sign of closeness to the people of Ukraine.“Rise up quickly” (Acts 12:7). Inspired by Pope Francis’ exhortation at the last Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, several Catholic associations, including the Laudato si’ movement and Italian Catholic Action, called other Catholic national realities to work toward sustainability and a “greener” future. Ecological conversion“This year,” a press release reads, “place your commitment to divest from fossil fuels as a sign that you have ‘divested’ from...

In Beaudoin v. Attorney General of British Columbia, (BC Ct. App., Dec. 16, 2022), the highest court in the Canadian province of British Columbia upheld 2020 and 2021 COVID orders of BC's Provincial Health Officer that prohibited in-person worship services. The court concluded that the Gathering and Events Order did not violate §15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects the equality rights of the churches that were plaintiffs in the suit, saying in part: [T]he G&E orders did not create any distinction based on the religious or non-religious nature of the setting in question. Any distinction between...

The family, who was moving from London to Tennessee, discovered the shocking snafu when they arrived at the Nashville International Airport and were given the wrong dog, according to a new report. After about an hour, airport staff sent her a photo of Bluebell locked in her crate, confirming that she was in the middle eastern kingdom. Miller told the outlet that she was already anxious about putting Bluebell on an hours-long flight after hearing “horror stories.

'What appears to many of us Catholics who love our Church is selective "mercy" from the Pope of Mercy.'Committee on Arrangements for the 2020 Republican National Committee via Getty Images(LifeSiteNews) – Sister Deidre “Dede” Byrne has come to the defense of Father Frank Pavone, calling his laicization a “travesty” and raising concerns about the Vatican’s favorable treatment of heterodox and abusive priests. “The most vocal pro-life priest has been laicized,” lamented Sister Byrne, a member of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts order in Washington, D.C. “In the wake of this travesty,” she said, “we still have the most...

"That is 42.5% illegal ballots in their random samples. This election was completely illegitimate," the Lake War Room quote-tweeted. Ballots reviewed in Wednesday's examination of ballots cast in Maricopa county for November's gubernatorial elections were not valid, according to Republican Candidate Kari Lake's legal team. A tweet from the Lake War Room said that 48 of 113 ballots reviewed during the examination were "19-inch ballots produced on 20-inch paper," "This one-inch discrepancy cause chaos on Election day. Causing the mass rejection of these votes as they were attempted to be read through the tabulators," the Kari Lake War Room wrote...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wexNTPkQKxY

On Nov. 30, 2020, Sean Hannity hosted Sidney Powell on his prime-time Fox News program. As she had in many other interviews around that time — on Fox and elsewhere in right-wing media — Ms. Powell, a former federal prosecutor, spun wild conspiracy theories about what she said was “corruption all across the country, in countless districts,” in a plot to steal re-election from the president, Donald J. Trump. At the center of this imagined plot were machines from Dominion Voting Systems, which Ms. Powell claimed ran an algorithm that switched votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R....

Joan Collins and Jaclyn Smith are celebrating the holidays together. On Tuesday, Collins, 89, shared a photo of herself alongside fellow Hollywood star Smith — both dressed to the nines — at a festive fête hosted by famed designer Mark Zunino.(snip) Smith, 77, can also be seen posing alongside friends in another Instagram post shared by one of the party's guests, Barneys New York's resident makeup artist Patrick Foley.(snip) During the 1980s, Collins and Smith were familiar faces on the small screen, playing leading roles in popular TV shows.

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ Proud Americans Graduating! More than 300 Airmen assigned to the 331st Training Squadron graduated from Basic Military Training at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, Dec. 14-15, 2022. Col. Scott Mills, Commander of the 355th Wing, Davis Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, reviewed the ceremony. (U.S. Air Force photo by Gregory Walker) Canteen Mission StatementShowing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. Donated Cookies from The Community! Awesome! Cookies sit on a table in the...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) successfully blocked the Republican establishment, joined by Democrats, in their efforts to slip a provision in a year-end spending package that would give green cards to tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the United States by President Joe Biden despite allegations of widespread vetting failures. Following the U.S. Armed Forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Biden opened a refugee pipeline that has resettled more than 86,000 Afghans in American communities — many without having to be screened or interviewed in person beforehand.

Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that the Republican Party under former President Donald Trump is “a paranoid cult of an authoritarian personality.” Raskin said, “I felt, you know, a measure of closure and satisfaction about the question of individual accountability. And, you know, justice in an individual case like that, anybody who has suffered, you know, a crime or lost a loved one to a crime, that kind of justice never equals the sense of sadness and anger that you go through. This is not equal to the immensity of the crime against American democracy,...